The tail vascular system of a mouse or rat is currently accessed by manually inserting a needle, syringe, or catheter into the lumen of a blood vessel in the tail of the animal by specially trained personnel. Some work has been done on automating the drawing of interstitial fluid of a mouse by creating a mouse “backpack” that arbitrarily pricks the back of a mouse (Li T, Barnett A, Rogers K L, Gianchandani Y B. “A Blood Sampling Microsystem For Pharmacokinetic Applications, Design, Fabrication, And Initial Results. Lab on a Chip. (2009)). Work has also been done to automate the blood sampling process after a needle or catheter has been manually inserted into the vascular system (Chen X, Cui D F, Liu C C, Li H., “Microfluidic Chip For Blood Cell Separation And Collection Based On Crossflow Filtration”, Sensors and Actuators B: Chemical. 130 (1), pp 216-221 (2008); Nakashima Y, Hata S, Yasuda T., “Blood Plasma Separation And Extraction From A Minute Amount Of Blood Using Dielectrophoretic And Capillary Forces,” Sensors and Actuators B: Chemical, 145(1), pp 561-569 (2009); Xie F, Bruntlett C S, Zhu Y, Kissinger C B, Kissinger P T., “Good Preclinical Bioanalytical Chemistry Requires Proper Sampling from Laboratory Animals: Automation of Blood and Microdialysis Sampling Improves the Productivity of LC/MSMS, Analytical Sciences, 19(4), pp 479-485 (2003); Yang S, Undar A, Zahn J D. A Microfluidic “Device For Continuous, Real Time Blood Plasma Separation”, Lab on a Chip, 6(7), pp 871-880(2006); Ma B, Ghavim S, Sutton R L, Harris N G, Phelps M, Wu H-M., “Real Time Blood Plasma Separation In A Microfluidic Chip”, J Nucl Med Meeting Abstracts, 50(2) MeetingAbstracts, pp 473—(May 1, 2009); Convert L, Morin-Brassard G, Cadorette J, Archambault Ml, Bentourkia Mh, Lecomte R, “A New Tool for Molecular Imaging: The Microvolumetric beta Blood Counter”, Journal of Nuclear Medicine; 48(7), pp 1197-1206 (July 2007)). Additionally, work has been done to facilitate inserting needles and catheters in humans. Some of these systems use structured light to locate vessels or probe the skin for vessel location. Once the vessel is located, image guidance or force feedback systems are used for the insertion of the needle. (Zivanovic A, Davies B L. A Robotic System For Blood Sampling. Information Technology in Biomedicine, IEEE Transactions on, 4(1), pp 8-14 (2000); Paquit V C, Ferrell T L, Meriaudeau F, et al., Near-Infrared Imaging And Structured Light Ranging For Automatic Catheter Insertion, Medium: X, (2006)).
Preclinical molecular imaging technologies have an increasingly broader application base while at the same time are becoming more user friendly. It is believed that no automated or semi-automated system has been developed that allows fluid injections, probe placement and blood sampling from a rodent's tail. Tail vein injections are a routine but critical step in most imaging applications; however, poor injections greatly affect the reliability of experimental results. For at least these reasons, a system and method for readily accessing vessels to facilitate injections and fluid sampling is desired. Embodiments of the invention disclosed herein meet this as well as other needs.